


Shorts on Doctor Who and Love

by tekhnicolor



Series: The Ficlet Universe [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 5,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3484895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekhnicolor/pseuds/tekhnicolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short, standalone chapters. Some are AUs, but mainly it's just my imagination kidnapping Ten and Rose and running away with them.</p><p>"The universe consists of moments, here and there and there again. But there are some moments that are bigger than other moments. Not longer, just bigger. More important. Little threads on which the universe hangs. The moments you can't run from, the ones you hold onto. Some moments last lifetimes. These are those moments."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Best Thing There Is

Some days the sky is red and she’s far away and he’s fighting for her, still.

There’s always an echo of her voice in his head. And some days it feels like the end, like every mistake he’s made in his entire life finds him again and all this time he’s been running for nothing. Some days he’s so, so tired. And it would be so easy to give up, to just close his eyes and say ‘take it all from me’ over and over until every shell of the man he never was crumbles into dust.

Some days living is so lonely.

~

But other days the sky is blue. A proper blue that melts into black and peppers with stars and on those days she’s with him. On those days it’s so much better.

He used to sit at the edge of her bed while she slept, telling her stories of the strangest, brightest countries he’d ever been to and the bravest people, of planets where songs were more sought-after than silver and children would stay up all night just to watch the stars dance.

One day she tugs on the side of his long coat, and he slips his arms from its sleeves one by one and crawls carefully beneath the covers, whispering into her hair tales of Gallifrey long before its fall into ruin.

He hasn’t slept anywhere since, doesn’t think he can.

~

And in the mornings they fly about the universe, bumping into stars here and there and generally causing more trouble than they prevent. The good kind though, always.

But in the evenings he holds her hand, and he plays his fingertips across her skin and lets his eyes fall closed and there is something so very perfect about it–about her.

And he catalogues every moment, stores them away so that on the lonely days, on the days when he wants to die, he calls them to memory one by one until the long sadness suddenly doesn’t seem so important, and it isn’t so bad, being alive.

~

Some days there’s light and life and a cascade of colors that dance in her eyes and some days he rushes through the TARDIS doors like he’s a child again and when he catches her up in his arms nothing has ever felt more like coming home.

Some days the sun rises in a splash of white-gold and some days he feels so, so loved.

Some days living ... living is the best thing there is.


	2. Paris

They watch the stars often. He rambles on about the elaborate names of a thousand constellations and she listens, though mainly she just watches the way his eyes light up when he talks about things that he loves.

They never light up more than when he's talking about her.

~

They visit Paris one day, and it's cold and wet and a light mist masks the streets. He complains that they could have gone anywhere. He knows the names of a billion different planets off the top of his head, begins to rattle them off just to prove his point. Perhaps also to impress her, a little.

_she'll love you. she'll love you. she'll love you whether or not you impress her._

The words don't settle in his bones.  
He tells her of the planet with the silver skies, claims she'd like it better there.

She only blushes and admits she's never been to Paris.

~

They get caught in the rain on a Saturday. He holds his coat over both their heads to keep them dry and neither of them seem to mind that it isn't doing any good.

_you could hold her. maybe she'd like that. maybe she's waiting._

He doesn't.

The fog makes her look ephemeral, and he remembers how he's lost everything he's ever loved.

~

When he's busy trying to get the sonic's dryer setting to work, she tells him that he's her hero.  
The sonic doesn't work and he laughs.

_not a hero. never a hero. could you love a hero?_

She reminds him that heroes aren't fearless.

~

Back in the TARDIS he kisses her.

His hands tremble the first time. She's still wet and his coat crumples to the floor and maybe he's a little clingy, but he always has been, with her. And he remembers how he's lost everything he's ever loved but he doesn't remember how to be alone and he knows he will take every moment he can with this girl even as he feels his hearts preparing to shatter.

Maybe everything breaks your heart in the end.  
Maybe what matters is what's worth getting your heart broken for.

He presses a lingering kiss to her lips and hopes to God she doesn't pull away.

She doesn't.

~

He swears he'll take her wherever she likes. 


	3. Days When the World Caves In

You either tell her you love her or you walk away.

He holds her hand when she needs him to, and when she doesn't. Sometimes he does it just to remind himself that she exists.

He doesn't tell her. Not then.

~

Some days he wonders if she wishes she'd never met him, if maybe he's like an addiction. You don't really want him but you can't help but keep going back, for the stars and the opportunities. Maybe even for him.

It might be intoxicating.

He asks her one day, tells her he's probably addicted to it so it's okay if she is, they can be junkies together.

She laughs. I don't need this, she says. I want this.

He swears she almost says _you._

 

It's 1800 and she's wearing muslin. Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 premiers in Vienna in just over twenty-six hours and he's heard it a thousand times but he wonders if it will sound different with her head on his shoulder and he wonders if he'll even hear it at all.

He doesn't. Her heartbeat is so much more enticing than clarinets.

He thinks she's fallen asleep _(how?)_ by the time he rests his arm across her shoulders, and when he finds out she hasn't he leaves it there because he doesn't know what to do and being a Time Lord is very confusing sometimes.

They stay that way until the music dies and the stage hands almost forget to turn out the lights.

He doesn't tell her then either.

~

He almost tells her once.

But the universe is unfair and no matter how much of your life you give to it, it never gives you extra time when you need it.

He deserves so much more.

~

The second time he can't. He's learned that love is too busy to be selfish and that sometimes "here let me give you my life, I don't care if you give me yours" has to be enough.

Also that maybe bittersweet means he gets bitter and she gets sweet and not that everyone gets some happy medium.

It might be a Wednesday. Or a Saturday. It doesn't matter.

He only falls in love on days when the world caves in.

~

You either tell her you love her or you walk away.

And they wonder why he's a broken man, now.


	4. Being Alive

He wakes up some mornings to a gust of wind filling his lungs and her careful fingers fixing his tie around his neck while he bounces impatiently on his toes. He tugs her with him to fling the TARDIS doors open to a new planet and it's _beautiful._

She loves him somehow and she's beautiful.

And she laughs at him when his eyes go wide, but there's snow on the mountains and a city built into the stone, winding towers and sloping bridges carved by hand and he's already planning a very impressive soliloquy on the finer points of architecture and stonework throughout the ages. Cylindrical rooms levered by ropes journey up and down the mountainside, and he can feel the tremors course through her when she hugs his arm for warmth, taste the icy cloud her breath makes when he leans down to press cold lips to hers and she exhales contentedly.

When the snow falls, it glitters like frosty starlight.

An orange sun paints the ground with rivers of gold and the splashes of light across the mountainsides remind him of Gallifrey. And like tendrils of silver fog, whispers of yesterday shiver on the air before him, the pangs of a long-lost home echoing in his chest for as long as it takes to let out a sliver of breath. But he feels in those moments the smooth winding of her fingers between his and he remembers then that though running makes it so terribly difficult to hold onto things, it doesn't mean that he has no home.

It just means he has homes everywhere.

~

He wakes up some mornings to her heart's beat and he can't stop looking—at her, but also at the curve of the earth, at colour, at how light disbands the darkness, at the birthmarks of time and impressions of space. At the universe he's so lucky to be a part of even on days when it's unbearable to exist. Days when his body is racked with sobs and he recalls all the things he'd tortured himself just to be able to keep and then lost anyway.

Being alive can break your heart.

But he's so lucky to have her.  
He's so lucky to be alive to have her.

~

He wakes up some mornings and the sky is beautiful and she's beautiful and he can't breathe he feels so, _so_ alive.

He wakes up some mornings and he's in love.


	5. Dreams

Her mum makes him park the TARDIS on their street for her entire birthday week. It rains every day, the street lights reflecting golden in the puddles, and they spend all of Friday in the TARDIS library. He reads to her from _Much Ado About Nothing,_ an original copy, signed by good ol' Will himself, and she laughs at all the right parts.

She scoots closer to him at all the right parts too, and he skips a line and pronounces three words wrong.

He knows the play by heart.

~

She tells him a dream of hers over dinner, to buy a cheap flat in the city and sleep on the floor when the furniture is back-ordered.

He remembers suddenly that one of the rooms is holographic, and fifteen doors later they're skating across an empty floor in their socks and she doesn't even pull away when he crashes into her on accident _(on purpose)_ and holds her for a fraction of a second too long.

She doesn't stop smiling for nearly an hour and he thinks how strange it is, that dreams don't really have to be big to be beautiful.

~

At 2:00am they eat cereal, and at 2:14 he laughs into her hair and it doesn't even feel unusual, the way she settles back against him in the dark.

Later they share the same sleeping bag, because he pretends he forgot to bring another but she knows and he knows she knows, and he finds her hand under the covers and tries very hard to pretend it isn't the only thing in the universe that makes him feel safe.

She lets go for a moment to untie her hair and he nearly panics.

~

It isn't until three hours after she's fallen asleep on his chest that he realizes he can't define anything about the way he feels towards her.

Funny. He can't define the word love either.

~

They miss the party.

She laughs into his coat-sleeve during the entirely of her mother's lecture and he can't help that he doesn't remember a single word Jackie says.

They can always skip to next year, anyway.


	6. The Neverending Story

And he's walking away again, feet crunching in the snow. It was snowing when he first took her hand, with this body. Some sort of snow.

The first face this face saw.

_This song is ending._

And the very, very last.

~

And he tells himself he's not afraid, to walk this universe alone but he is and for the first time in his lives he thinks that maybe there is more to life than time and space. That maybe some things exist outside of them and so cannot be bound by them.

He thinks that maybe love is one of those things.

It has to be.

And God he'd do anything for that girl.

He thinks how love has a funny way of turning people into martyrs.

~

He remembers it all.

Gallifrey. Too long ago. Somewhere out there is a boy. He's alone and crying and he screams sometimes when no one can hear him and the noise reverberates off the musty barn walls.

He doesn't know where home is, anymore.

And he doesn't know it just yet, but someday he'll find her.

~

All of Time and Space. Somewhere out there is a madman, tumbling through the sky and there's a fire in his bones that pulls him everywhere. It gets lonely, sometimes, when the flames run cold.

So many lives, so many faces.

This can't be all there is, this loneliness. The universe is a great deal darker than he'd hoped.

He doesn't know it just yet, but soon he'll find a light brighter than the stars.

~

2005\. January the first. He's only just finished saying goodbye. But somewhere out there is a beginning. Somewhere out there is a girl working in a shop and a man with younger eyes than his and darker hair and a lot less to live for.

He doesn't know it just yet, but soon he'll have everything.

~

And he's walking away again. He takes off his coat, tosses it aside. He won't wear it, anymore.

He doesn't really want to go.

But if love means anything, it means goodbye is just another way of saying 'until next time'.

And the curtains close, the act is over. Starlight spills from his veins and he wishes he'd known all those years ago that somewhere, somewhen, he isn't really ever alone.

This song is ending  
 _is ending  
is ending  
is ending_  
but the story _never_ ends.


	7. Learning

He's learning that she's a fan of New Orleans, because she makes him dance with her to "Let Them Talk" and "What a Wonderful World" and "Love Don't Roam." He hates the last one, but he'd be lying if he said a part of him didn't love the fact that, this time, he's holding her. It makes him feel like he's beaten fate for once, and that makes him giddy, if he's honest, and just a bit smug.

And he's pretty sure she knows how he feels, but he guesses by the way she smiles into his neck that she plays it anyway because she likes how he folds himself to her when they dance, how he hums 'my precious girl' almost instinctively and how his long fingers curl against her waist like he's afraid of losing her again.

And he is. He really is. He doesn't know if it will ever settle that this time, he gets forever.

~

He's learning that she grins wildly with him when they crash land on a planet with a name not even he knows.

It takes 8/9ths of his strength not to kiss her then, and the last 9th to act serious-like when some rude six-eyed alien demands to know what they're doing there.

He consoles himself with the fact that he'll most definitely, 9/9, 100% kiss her the moment they're back on board the TARDIS.

He's learning that some adventures are better than others.

~

He's also learning that she likes him in jeans, so he wears them a bit more often, though he'll never give up his suits. They make him look clever, he tells her.

But she messes his hair up ridiculously every time he does _(which is really quite rude)_ and sometimes she laughs so loudly he can hear it ringing in his head all day _(which he really, really likes)_ and sometimes she promises him forever while they lie lengthwise on the library couch and her hair tickles his chin.

He doesn't mind the domestics of it, not one bit.

~

And he knows the darkness will never entirely let him go, that it's a part of him he can't always keep dormant.

But it's different, not having to ask her to stay with him, just knowing that she will.

~

He doesn't sleep a lot but when he does it's next to her and when he does, she lies with him until he wakes up.

Her name is Rose, and he's learning that he _so_ loves her.


	8. Only The Things You Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The French title referred to in here in "The Little Match Girl," in case you don't speak French. Or don't feel like opening a new tab to use Google Translate.

It's a Saturday when he breaks.

He's been watching her decorate his living room for Christmas, paper and tinsel spilling across the floor as she tips over a box. He would help her pick it up if he could take his eyes off her.

He can't and so he doesn't.

She might be laughing at him. He isn't actually sure because then she's pinning a wreath to the woodwork of a shelf, winding garland around the railing, standing on her tiptoes to straighten a paper mâché star and he can't think of anything other than how beautiful she would look in the dark, with shadows from the Christmas lights skittering across her face.

The TARDIS seems to agree because the main lights goes off and the Christmas ones on and the colors dance in her smile and he's kissing her.

He doesn't even remember crossing the room.

~

In the evening he holds her hand.

He doesn't have a reason, other than that sometimes it's nice to be connected to something.

It rains, and they watch _La Petite Marchande de'Allumetes._ He translates and she cries.

_nothing lasts forever on this earth._

He smiles. _ah, but we walk among the stars._

He hates how that sounds so like denial.

~

_do you know how lonely it is?_ He asks one morning. And she's surprised because he never talks about himself, not ever.

_what?_

_running._ He closes his eyes and she thinks she understands how moving so fast makes it so hard to hold onto things.

He tells her he doesn't know if his home is everywhere or nowhere.

She's beautiful because she chases him when he runs away.

~

One day he asks her.

His hand is in hers, again. He doesn't think it can be his fault that they fit together so perfectly.

_how long are you gonna stay with me?_

And he's so used to everyone leaving that he doesn't understand when she says _forever._

~

He loses her the day he understands.

The events play over and over in his head like a nightmare because forgetting is too hard and holding on is too hard and it's only the things you love that can break your heart. He wonders sometimes if this is a good reason to stop loving things.

~

It takes him too long to realize that love is worth the nightmares. 


	9. A Hell of a Good Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten/Rose with a touch of e. e. cummings. ;)

There are days when the running is the scariest thing. When they race across the stars and rush tumbling and out of breath through the TARDIS doors, three hearts pounding and she can swear she feels the turning of the earth the same way he does and maybe she's right.

They laugh at the rest of the universe and he mumbles things like "poor stars and stones" and then they fall to silence.

It's terrifying but he wouldn't trade it for the world.

~

There are other days, however, when the running seems easy compared to the thought of being alone. Days when they think they've lost each other and then find each other again and it's alright but it's not because the _'what if'_ never goes away.

On those days they make tea and share the captain's chair and he lays his coat over both their laps and waits until he can feel the weight of her head against his shoulder before taking his first sip.

He shakes his head at their universe-given fate and complains that "we doctors know a hopeless cause if—" He stops before the gravitas sets in.

'I hate this world,' she says, pressing her nose to his shoulder, and he traces the blue-river veins at her wrist absentmindedly until they disappear farther up her arm.

She shivers in his arms and he realizes what he's been doing. What he's always been doing. To her.

'Then let's go to another one.'

And they do.

~

They go to every world he can think of, hopping from one to the next because it makes her smile and because new things make him forget old ones and because there is just so much to _see._

And there are days when running for their lives is frightening and there are days when the thought of losing her is terrifying, but it doesn't matter so much because with her, every single one of those days is beautiful.

~

And he prays to every god in the sky that he will have her long enough that there will come a day when they run out of worlds and when he holds out his hand, waits for her to take it, and says 'listen.

There's a hell of a good _universe_ next door.

Allons-y.'

~

_(His prayers will be answered later, painfully, unexpectedly,  
but then he supposes at least someone must have been listening.)_


	10. From New Teeth to Quite Right Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Invasion/Doomsday

He’s a new new Doctor. He’s the same man always, though. But still new. He’s told Rose that, before. He’ll probably tell her again.

He’s got all of time and space at his fingertips, worlds and worlds he’s never seen before, not with these eyes, the thrumming pulse of _Time_ searing through his bones, blood he’s never felt burning in his veins, so much to see, again, for the first time. Songs he has yet to sing. Doesn’t think he can run fast enough. There is so much, too much, never too much, to _see._

And what is he looking at?

Rose Tyler.

But he can’t help it. She’s golden and new and familiar, much too familiar, and she smiles at the stars like she knows them as well as she knows him and it should frighten him, how well she does know him, only it doesn’t. Instead it makes him shiver, that she doesn’t want him to be alone.

Now that he thinks of it, he doesn’t really want to be alone anymore either.

~

So he takes her hand and he points out a star, and he promises he’ll take her there.

_(He doesn’t really know where it is or maybe he does but it doesn’t matter because she laughs and he lets his eyes linger on her face because if he can make her laugh maybe he can love her better this time and maybe, god maybe, it will be enough.)_

~

Later there’s a wall, white and wide and the light dies.

He doesn't tell her he loves her.

He's all in a rush trying to get the words out and it's ironic because the only reason he can't say them is because he wants to too badly.

He says it to the empty air every day after.

~

This song is ending, he knows, feels it in the starlight leaking from his bones, but their story _never_ ends.

He tastes the winter and he goes home.


	11. Anyway

He knows he loves her. He's never been exceptionally clever when it comes to feelings but this time the readings are there, as obvious as the stars.

He feels his pulse-rate increase every time she holds his hand, though inside he feels a beautiful quiet. Sometimes he can't stop himself from pressing his thumb to the inside of her wrist to see if the same thing happens to her.

He's pretty sure it does, though it could just be desperate wishing on his part.

~

And it's disconcerting, the whole love thing, but also brilliant.

Because it isn't supposed to be like this. He has a past that haunts every corner of his mind and thousand-year-old blood that makes his veins run black and he's not supposed to let people love him.

Not like this.

He's not really supposed to fall in love either.

~

But he does anyway, and he knows he does because he dreams about her, about running with her, forever. About reaching the end of time and running still. About leaving the universe to collapse behind them like a crumbling bridge and just running.

Silence terrifies him because he can hear time slipping away.

~

And so one night he knocks on her door and when she opens it wrapped in a blanket and squinting at the orange light from the console room, he tugs at his earlobe and asks if she's ever properly measured the width of her bed and if she'd like him to do so as a safety measure in case she's in danger of rolling over and falling off.

Her hair tickles the hollow of his throat and his chest has never felt so warm.

It should be strange but it isn't.

He knows he loves her because he's usually so good at being alone.

~

He also knows he loves her because when he hugs her he doesn't let her go until his breathing has steadied and he knows she's safe.

You always hold tightest the things you're most afraid to lose.

And you're always most afraid to lose the things you love.

~

And he knows it shouldn't make sense and that there are pieces of him that are chilling and unforgivable and he knows the kind of man he is doesn't deserve the kind of love he wants.

But he wants it anyway, and he wants her anyway, and maybe that makes him selfish but maybe it also makes him brave.

And maybe love is both.


	12. Reticence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The rest is silence." ~Hamlet

Sometimes they talk about silly things.

 _'What’s your favorite colour?'_ he asks, poking his head into her bedroom.

She yelps and turns around.

_'Erm, blue?'_

_'Is it really?'_

_'Yup,'_ she says, and pretends she doesn’t notice the smug look on his face.

Later he buys her blue nail polish and they end up painting each other’s faces on the console-room floor.

~

Sometimes they talk about frightening things.

 _'What if this is it?'_ she asks him one day, his hand curled around her waist and the fire making soft crackling noises in the dark.

_'What do you mean?'_

_'Well, what if when we, you know, die, someday ...'_ She plucks at his coat sleeve. _'There’s just . . . nothing? An’ this is all there is.'_

She’s sitting next to him on the couch, and he glances over at her.

 _'The rest is silence,'_ he muses, and in the firelit shadows she gives him a concerned look.

He opens his mouth to tell her that yes, Rose Tyler, everything has its time and everything ends. But he can’t. He’s lived long enough to know that being okay with endings doesn’t make them any less painful.

He wonders why everybody wants so badly to last forever. If not here, then somewhere else.

With her curled into his side, he thinks he understands. 

_'Not all things end,'_ he tells her.  
 _'Not love. Not always.'_

~

Sometimes they don’t talk at all.

They sit at the end of her bed and he holds her hand. Her fingers are distracting, the way they move fractions of an inch every time he inhales. After a moment he lifts her hand and presses his lips to the purple veins at the inside of her wrist.

He thinks he might be afraid of leaving.

He kisses her then, for the first time. When it’s over, he keeps her hand in his, holds it tight to his chest and pretends nothing else in the world exists.

They fall asleep together. 

And when they wake up he tries to tell her he loves her but the words don't seem good enough and so he lets her loosen his tie and pull the cufflinks from his sleeves. 

She looks at him like he’s just given her the universe, and he has he has he has.

He doesn’t leave, not then, not for as long as he can help it.


	13. He Does

One time it's Christmas.

They walk through a park on Christmas Eve. Just a small park with a little tree dressed in lights and snow, and he holds her hand. 

He always holds her hand, but this time it's different. This time he pays special attention to the way her pulse races beneath his fingertips. This time he tucks both their hands into his coat pocket when the first flakes of snow start falling. He watches out of the corner of his eye when they alight on her gold hair, swallows his grin and looks straight ahead when she turns to him and raises her eyebrows.

This time he thinks he knows how to love her better. This time he thinks he's got it right. 

He shouldn't love her, but he does. 

-

There's a see-through dome above the Christmas tree that keeps the snow off, makes it settle around you like a vast umbrella. After dinner, there's music, and the people dance beneath it to the lilting notes of an invisible piano. He asks her, takes her arm, touches his fingers to her hips more lightly than the snowfall, and she smiles into his shoulder in a gesture he can only hope is happiness, her fingers at the nape of his neck making him feel warmer than he's been in centuries.

He asks her if she's happy. 

Her eyes are watering when she replies, "Are you?"

And it's more than he can take. The way she's let her happiness link to his own, let her legs move in tandem with his as he pulls her across the sky.

He shouldn't kiss her, but he does.

-

And there is a city, where the lights flicker on with the stars and the earth mirrors the sky like a reflection over a lake and there is no horizon. There are streets like the backbones of a dizzying creature, people who don't remember the days before them, shops that stay open until midnight and close early on the weekends. There's a sentence he almost says, between a street-lamp and a theatre, and there's a night when she lets him lay his head on her chest while the twilight comes.

There are days when it hurts and days when it's perfect. There's a house that was built in the stars and a train to take them anywhere they like. There's strangeness and newness and familiarity, life and time and the whole of space. There are secret words he says only to her and corners of the universe no one else has ever been to, and there is always, _always_ a hand to hold.

He shouldn't take it, but he does.


End file.
